My Redemption
by youreconfusingme
Summary: As Don Flack mourns for his love's death, he comes to realize something far more important.


**My Redemption**

**A/N: **my first Flangell story. Inspired by Double I 4 My Guyz's 'Broken' but I promise that I have a much more different view of Jessica Angell's passing :) tee-hee XD

**No, I don't own CSI NY. The verse was taken from Job 1:21.**

PS: The italicized words are flashbacks except for the passage from Job. This is a Don Flack POV.

Please R&R!! This is for my Jess, Rosalie Velasco (sharpshooter 'to! Haha!) and for Jag Lady (thanks for all the inspiration and encouragement!! :) –H Ü

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"She's gone." Those were the words that escaped my lips when Danny Messer asked me about her. I didn't like how it sounded. It was like I'm speaking a foreign language that I could not understand.

It's so bizarre to think how one day could change everything in my life. A week before her untimely death, Jess and I went to a Filipino restaurant to celebrate the end of the day. I always smile when I remember what she had said that night to coax me out of the couch in front of the TV so we could dine outside…

_"Donnie, we should celebrate!" Jessica Angell exclaimed as she tried to pull Don Flack out of the couch. Don had wanted to rest after a grueling day with the perps._

"_Celebrate? What for?" he asked grumpily. But this didn't seem to dampen her mood. "We should celebrate _life. _You know, Don, the clock is always ticking away. I once heard from church that we should always live everyday like it's our last. Do our best in everything that we do. I think we did the best that we could for today by catching the right men and doing our jobs to protect the city. That is why we should _celebrate._"_

Jessica had always said stuff like those. I don't know where she gets them, but I sometimes spy her reading the Bible and kneeling down by our bed to pray. Maybe she gets it from God Himself. Nonetheless, I let myself be dragged out of our apartment that night and I can't say that I didn't enjoy our date that night. Aside from the delicious Filipino delicacies and soups that we had, I had enjoyed her company most.

Little did I know that it was going to be our last.

Sometimes—okay, more like every night—I wonder why God took her away from me. Killing the perp who shot her hadn't seemed enough. Now I know that God doesn't care. Because no matter how many times I had begged at the hospital for Him to bring her life back, He didn't do it. He had never cared.

"So this is how you repay Jess back for her faithfulness to You?!" I shouted angrily for God to hear. I sure do hope He had heard me.

Two months passed now since Jess's death and it still hurt so damn much to think about her. I hadn't cleaned off the apartment yet of her stuff—I didn't know where to start. It was still as if she were living here with me. I could still feel her presence. It was like she had just gone on a vacation with her family and would be coming back again soon. I was still waiting for her.

_Am I going crazy? _No..no. Mac Taylor told me that it would still be a long time before the scar healed and the pain receded, and I trust Mac. He had already experienced this with his wife's death so he probably knew a lot more with grief than I do.

I was going to fall asleep any minute now, when my brain reminded me of what Jess had told be two days before her shootout…

_"You know, Don, God is so good that He gave me someone like you to share my life with. I had never been so happy with someone else besides you. That's why every day, I tell Him that I am ready to die in Him—because He had already given me everything I could ever need and I am finally content with my life, unlike before…" Jess trailed off, looking at the distance._

"_Before what, sweetheart?" Don asked, stroking her cheeks in the darkness of their room._

"_Unlike before, when He wasn't in my life and when I had not come to love you yet," she smiled at him, showing Don the sincerity of her words._

Throughout the entire reminisce, only her last statement thudded in the ears of my brain: "Unlike before, when He wasn't in my life and when I had not come to love you yet." Sure, I know how much she loved me, but what I couldn't understand was how she became extremely happy and confident and complete when she had God in her life. I knew she didn't come to church often, since she didn't really have the luxury of time, but she had always read the Bible and prayed. Heck, she even knew more about religion than I do!

So, more of curiosity about Jess's secret to a fulfilled life than interest in God Himself (I am still mad at Him for killing Jess), I stood to open the light in our bedroom and went to the desk where Jess kept her Bible and opened it.

I got the Bible out and sat down on the floor to read. I didn't know what to expect; I never knew how or why Jess was so fascinated with this book. I opened her Bible and found 'Jessica Angell, from Papa' inscribed on top. I turned the pages and finally came to a stop on the book of Job. My eyes rested on a passage.

"_Naked I came from my mother's womb, and naked I will depart. The L__ORD__ gave and the L__ORD__ has taken away; may the name of the L__ORD__ be praised."_

I stared at it for a long time. I thought about how Jess told me that she thinks she will be able to get through if her father didn't make it when Mr Angell was at the hospital because of a bypass operation. "After all," she had said, "God gave me Dad and He has all the right to take him away whenever He wants to."

I also thought about what she said to Mac during his wife's death anniversary that year. "She's in a better place now, Mac. God has a reason why He took her at this time. We may not know it, but He does," she had said when she went to Claire Conrad-Taylor's burial site with the team.

After a long while of staring at the same page, I finally felt the salty tears that were running from my eyes. Then I realized something: there must be a purpose, whatever in the world it was, why God had taken Jess away. She had been ready—she always was. And now, Jessica Angell was finally in a better place, because of her redemption.

I realized that God really saw Jess through, from the start to the very end. He had never stopped to care. He had loved her from the start and now, God must have a plan for me, too. Maybe this was the mission of Jess's life in this world—that somebody would benefit because of her death. And then God's name would be praised.

I stared again. And then it finally hit me, hard in the soul and spirit. Jess lived and died to demonstrate to someone that he needed God's redemption in his life in order for him to find peace. _Jess had died to make way for _my redemption_, _I thought.

_God_ had been in this all along. Jess had never left my side after all.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

**A/N: **so what did you guys think? I really love this story. It gives a happy ending for Don Flack :) that way, he wouldn't feel as lonely.

And again, please R&R!! ^^thanks.


End file.
